


the daughter of war

by Anonymous



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Mythology, Alternate Universe - Percy Jackson Fusion, Demigods, Gen, Gods & Goddesses, Injury, Minor Violence, New Adult, Roommates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-14
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-22 00:42:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30030411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Octavia's been at Camp Half-Blood for half her life, and she has no interest in leaving. It takes a war, a near-fatal injury and the kindness of an unwanted roommate to show her that she has the strength to forge her own path.
Relationships: Octavia Blake & Niylah
Comments: 3
Kudos: 6
Collections: TROPED: Madness 2.0





	the daughter of war

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Round 1 of Troped Madness, 2.0!
> 
> Character: Octavia Blake  
> Theme: New Adult  
> Trope #1: Roommates  
> Trope #2: Based on a children's book series. This fic takes place in the universe of Percy Jackson & the Olympians.

Octavia Blake is the daughter of war. It’s only fitting that she’d die in it. 

At least, she hopes that’s the case, because if that’s true then there’s some kind of poetry in her current circumstance, even if she can’t see it yet. If that’s true, then the fact she’s bleeding out from a stab wound on the corner of a Manhattan street might actually mean something in the long run. 

The gods have always loved dramatic, elaborate, and graceful deaths for their children. She’s not giving them any of those things, but maybe just this once, her parentage will be enough. Perhaps that will be enough for them to write stories about her, to sing songs about her demise, and to remember her as a hero among the stars. She’s never claimed to be a good person, but that doesn’t matter, not if she can give them something to sing about. Perhaps that will be enough to earn her a place in Elysium, and she can rest easy, knowing that she’s done her part. 

The battle is still raging all around her. Kronos, the leader of the Titans and self-declared worst enemy of the Olympian gods, is leading his army in a siege of New York City. The demigods of Camp Half-Blood and all their allies are still fighting and dying in an attempt to stop him. Octavia had even helped lead the charge. After all, she’s the daughter of Ares, the literal god of war. Battle is her birthright. 

With a cry, she manages to push herself up so that she’s on her hands and knees. Blood runs down the concrete street beneath her, but it’s hard to tell if it belongs to her or the dead demigod who had stabbed her. Octavia had managed to kill her attacker, but not before a golden sword had gone through her stomach, leaving her beaten and defenseless. She’s not dead yet, but her muscles are straining and though she tries and tries, she can’t make it to her feet. 

Off in the distance, in the middle of another fight, she can see a bright red light that sends a chill through her veins. It’s the unmistakable glow of another child of Ares who has been blessed by their father and given extra strength in their fight. She knows that it’s not uncommon for Ares to give his children these auras of invulnerability in battle, to support those he deems worthy, but as she looks at her shaking hands, she can see that no such gift has been given to her. 

Ares is here. Ares is watching, and Ares, her  _ father,  _ has decided that Octavia is going to die here. 

Her strength gives out and she falls flat on the ground once more. All she can do is put a hand on her wound that does nothing to keep her blood where it’s meant to be, and hope that someone passes by and takes pity on Octavia Blake, the daughter of war cursed to die in a battle her father is responsible for. 

Maybe, just maybe, there’s enough poetry in that - but as she lays dying in the cold streets of Manhattan, staring up at stars that do not look back, Octavia knows that they will sing no songs about her. 

* * *

_ She dreams of her mistakes, as all heroes do.  _

_ Octavia wasn’t destined for greatness. She knew that as soon as her mother hid her under the floor, too ashamed to look at the child she’d born from an affair with a god. Something about it all drove her mother mad, but she never knew exactly why or what happened. It wasn’t as though her godly father stuck around to explain, either.  _

_ In the end it was her human half-brother, Bellamy, who broke her free, sneaking her out of the house when she wasn’t more than ten years old. He didn’t and still doesn’t know anything of the myths and legends that surround her existence, but he’d helped her anyways, because he was kind. He was kind as he helped her into his car and drove her away from the house in the dead of night, until a monster attacked and they’d flipped into a ditch.  _

_ Sometimes, Octavia wonders what he remembers from that night. Mortals can’t see monsters, after all. Maybe he thinks that another car hit them, or that the roads were too slippery despite it not having rained, or maybe he thinks that it’s just simply his own fault he crashed the car and his sister vanished. She hopes that’s not true. She hopes that he’s found peace, but one of her many regrets is never being able to find out for sure.  _

_ Another demigod had been tracking the monster and they’d killed it and rescued her, pulling her from the wreckage and whisking her off to Camp Half-Blood, the only place in the world that was safe for people like her. It was there she’d lived the rest of her life, not having anywhere else in the mortal world to go. It became her home, and she didn’t quite know how to leave.  _

_ So - she didn’t. Most of all, she thinks, she regrets this. She turned eighteen which was uncommon enough for demigods and then - she stayed. There was war on the horizon and she’d used this as her excuse, but she knows everyone saw through it. There was nothing stopping her from venturing out into the world and making a name for herself in whatever manner she wanted, but she never did. All her friends from Camp that were her age left. Her half-siblings, all children of Ares, didn’t feel the need to stay like she claimed she did. Nobody forced her to leave, all of them distracted by far greater things. Octavia just never left, simply because she didn’t know how.  _

_ She turned eighteen, nineteen, twenty - and then, when she finally was able to take part in the great war against Kronos and his army, the one she claimed she’d been waiting for all these years, she lasted maybe twenty minutes before she was stabbed by the enemy and left to die in the street.  _

_ Octavia dreams of all the things she should have done but didn’t, all the battles she fought but lost, and all the words she wished she’d said but never did. She never found love. She never found her purpose. She never became the war hero that the father she’s never spoken to probably wants her to be.  _

_ She’s the daughter of war down to the bone. Even in her dreams, she finds no peace.  _

* * *

Her dreams end, but her life does not, which is the exact opposite of what Octavia expected to happen. 

She wakes up slowly, but she  _ does  _ wake up to find herself surrounded by white walls in what has, over the years, become a very recognizable building to her. Camp Half-Blood’s Infirmary is far louder and busier than it ever has been before, but it’s still familiar. Octavia’s gotten into far too many fights than she probably should have during her time at Camp, and as a result, she’s spent more time in here than her own cabin. 

Everything hurts but she forces her eyes open anyways, pushing through the pain like the warrior she’s always tried to be. It’s hard, what with the bright sunlight coming through a window close to her bed and the fluorescent lights of the building itself seemingly turned all the way up, but she manages to take in her surroundings. She can tell she’s in a separate room from the general Infirmary area, which is  _ never  _ a good sign on the state of her injury, but it’s also allowing her some reprieve from the bustling noise down the hall. 

Octavia’s about to ignore the ache in her bones and sit up, when she looks to the left and realizes that, despite her first impressions of the room, she’s not alone. 

“Hi,” the woman says once they’ve made eye contact. She’s laying in a bed of her own, the window on the wall separating the two of them. A small stitched cut on her forehead is the only visible wound she has but the exhaustion evident in her expression is proof enough that she’d just gone through the battle. She looks slightly older than the average camper, meaning she’s around Octavia’s age, and the longer she stares at her the more familiar she seems. 

“Do I know you?” she asks, her tone much harsher than she’d intended. Truth be told, Octavia’s not happy that someone else is here. She knows that the Infirmary must be filled to the brim and they’re using every available space they can, but having someone in the room with her means that someone is now able to see her when she’s at her weakest. 

The woman scoffs, but there’s no malice hidden behind it. In fact, when Octavia looks back over at her, she sees nothing but genuine kindness in her eyes. “I’m not surprised you don’t recognize me,” she replies. “We went to Camp together.” 

She still looks familiar, but only in the vaguest of ways, as if the two of them had passed each other on the street years ago and nothing more. “Did we?” she asks, proceeding to grit her teeth and push herself up. She nearly blacks out from the sudden eruption of pain in her chest but she manages to hold herself up in a semi-seated position, falling backwards once more only when she’s propped up her pillow so she can stay that way. 

Across from her, the woman looks on with amusement at this whole event, but Octavia doesn’t mind. She’s sitting, and her unwanted roommate isn’t, which means that in this silent competition of strength, she’s won. “I’m Niylah,” the woman responds. “Child of Demeter.” 

_ Demeter _ \- goddess of the harvest _.  _ That explains the undue kindness, despite it all. Truth be told, she’s not sure what any of them were doing in the middle of the warzone. Any child of Demeter would do whatever it took to avoid conflict. “I remember now,” she says, though in truth she only somewhat recalls her presence at Camp. “You used to garden a lot. Bit stereotypical, don’t you think?” 

“Yes,” Niylah replies with a hum, “and you fight a lot.” 

Octavia’s eyes narrow. “So?”

She chuckles quietly in response. “So, we are all a bit too much like our parents in the end, no?” 

Her mother hid her under the floor for ten years and her father refused to say a single word to her for the decade after, so Octavia’s not exactly thrilled to hear this. “Whatever,” she sighs, and then for good measure, she adds, “Children of Demeter are good for nothing, anyways.” Hopefully, that will stop Niylah from talking to her any more than she already has. Upon her silence to this, Octavia looks away from her and towards the slightly ajar door to their room, begging somebody to come in and save her from this whole situation. 

As it turns out, she doesn’t have to wait long. Clarke, a daughter of the healing god Apollo, takes a couple of steps into the room only moments later. Her long blonde hair is tied up in a messy bun and it’s clear by the bags under her eyes she’s barely slept in days. “You’re both alive?” she asks, only sparing them both a glance as she glances through papers on a clipboard in her hands. 

“So it seems,” Niylah replies. 

“Good, good,” Clarke mutters, hardly looking at either of them. Clarke’s a couple years older than Octavia herself. She’d also stayed at Camp after reaching adulthood, having taken a healing job at the Infirmary. It was rare that demigods turned eighteen in general, and as such those with desired skills like healing could often work at the Camp year round, if they wanted to. 

Clarke’s already turning to leave, only stopping in the doorway when Octavia calls out to her. “Wait!” she says, straining to lean forwards as if this will make the doctor better listen to her. “When can I get out of here?”

“Get out of here?” Clarke repeats, glancing down at the papers in her hands and then back at Octavia herself. “You nearly died out there. If Harper hadn’t found you when she did, you  _ would  _ have. You’ve got a while more to go in here.”

“A while more - wait!” Octavia tries to call out to her again, but the blonde is gone, no doubt heading to several more rooms to check in on the countless patients keeping her busy. With a sigh perhaps too dramatic for the situation, she leans back on her pillows once again, doing all she can to accept her fate. 

It takes her a moment to hear it, but amidst the silence that follows, Niylah begins to laugh. “Harper found you?” she asks, eyes shining with amusement. 

She gets a distinct feeling that she’s being made fun of, and for that Octavia narrows her eyes, but her curiosity wins out in the end. “I guess,” she says. “I don’t know. I don’t even know who that is.”

Niylah leans back, a wide smile on her face. “Harper is my sister.” 

It takes a second, but then it dawns on Octavia, and her jaw drops. She can feel the flush of shame as it fills up her chest. “No,” she says, shaking her head. “You don’t mean-”

“It looks like children of Demeter are good for something after all, hmm?”

Octavia audibly groans, leaning back with such force that the pillow she’d propped up falls back too, and she’s once again laying flat on her back. She shuts her eyes with purpose and pretends that this doesn’t bother her, but all she can remember is how her father failed to come to her aid with his aura back in the battle and once again, it’s as though she’s lost a battle she doesn’t remember signing up for. 

* * *

It’s a day later when Raven, her best and sometimes only friend, comes to visit her. She’s a daughter of Hephaestus, the god of fire and forges, and she’s also Octavia’s age. Like so many others who had long since aged out of the Camp, she’d come back to fight in the battle alongside them all, but now that that was fought and done, she was leaving once more. 

“Are you sure you can’t stay longer?” Octavia asks, pleading with her to do just that. 

Raven smiles softly, leaning back in the chair she’s sitting in next to Octavia’s bed. A bright red jacket sits comfortably around her shoulders, the only splash of colour in the Infirmary room. “I live  _ and  _ work out west, you know that,” she says. “It was hard enough explaining to everyone why I needed to suddenly take a vacation out to New York.” 

A gifted mechanic due to her godly parentage, Raven left Camp at eighteen like everyone but Octavia had, and had moved out to California for a fresh start. She’d gotten officially certified and was working at her dream job, and not once had she looked back, not until the grand battle was on the horizon and she’d had no choice. 

It’s selfish, and completely untrue, but Octavia can’t help but feel as though she’s part of what Raven had so willingly left behind. She’s a part of the Camp, after all, and she’d stayed all this time.  _ Nobody forced you to stay,  _ a small voice in her head reminds her, but she’s once again faced with the overwhelming reality of not knowing where else to go, and she stops thinking about the future she never thought she’d have. 

“Yeah, I know,” she says, doing her best to put on a fake smile. “Just - come and visit, okay?”

Raven bites her lip for a moment, deep in thought. “Or,” she says, slowly, “you could come and visit  _ me _ .”

She sighs, dropping her gaze to the floor. “There’s nothing out there for me,” she replies. “You know that.”

“There’s something out there for all of us,” comes the response. “This place is great when we’re young, and vulnerable, and we don’t know what to do. But not forever.”

Octavia’s got a bad habit of assuming she’s being attacked even when she isn’t, but she finds herself lapsing back into this as she tenses after Raven’s words. “Clarke stayed,” she points out. “Nobody judges her for that.”

“Yeah, Clarke got a job,” Raven points out. “She works here. You could do that, if you want.”

“And do what? I don’t have skills like her, or like you - nothing that could help around here.”

Raven sighs, her patience clearly being tested. “You’re a skilled fighter,” she says. “I’ve seen you with that sword - maybe there’s a way you could teach sparring lessons.”

She scoffs, gesturing down at her torso that’s covered with the blanket. “Clearly I’m not all that great,” she says, “or I wouldn’t have ended up here.” She doesn’t say more than that aloud, but the reality of her situation is beginning to haunt her. Being the daughter of the god of war, she always thought that her place was a battle, and that she was nothing if not a warrior - but war had nearly killed her. Ares hadn’t helped her, not once, even though he’d given other children of his auras of their own and helped them fight. She, however, had been abandoned and left to die, having failed at the one thing she thought she could actually do. 

“I don’t know, Octavia,” Raven says, and then she’s standing, bracing herself against the wall as she puts weight on her bad leg, supported in the elaborate mechanical brace she’d built all on her own. “The point is - there’s options out there for you. A  _ lot  _ of options. Do something that makes you happy.”

With that, she turns and leaves, and Octavia doesn’t say anything else to try and make her stay.  _ I didn’t think I’d live long enough to have to figure out what that is,  _ she thinks, the words on the tip of her tongue, but she stays silent. It’s weakness that’s kept her here in the Camp, she knows this now, but maybe she doesn’t know how to be anything  _ but  _ weak. 

“Why do you stay?”

She groans inwardly as the voice of her unwanted roommate fills the air. “Why do you care?” she snaps back, not in the mood for a discussion. 

Niylah doesn’t say anything immediately, but when Octavia looks over at her, her eyes are once again filled with genuine kindness, so much so that she doesn’t know how to react. Few people have ever looked at her with such warmth. “Your friend is right,” she finally says. “There is a whole world out there for us.”

“Is there?” she challenges. Her body’s healed somewhat over the last day, and now she’s able to sit up and stay seated without assistance. “They always told us that Camp was the only safe place for us. Then we turn eighteen, and that suddenly changes? Most of us don’t even  _ make  _ it to eighteen, you know. If you ask me, I’m making the smart decision by staying.”

Niylah’s next words are said in a voice so low and unlike her that it almost startles her. “I know you may think that children of Demeter do not understand what it means to fight,” she says, “but I am well aware that most of us do not make it to adulthood. I have watched many of my siblings die horrible, undeserved deaths. I am  _ well  _ aware of the danger our lives are in.”

For the first time, when Octavia looks at her, she can see the very real pain and anguish that Niylah carries with her. “I’m sorry,” she says before she even realizes that she is, in fact, apologetic.  _ ‘Sorry’  _ isn’t a word that she often says, but this time, she means it. “I didn’t mean to say that you didn’t know that - that you hadn’t experienced it.” 

She hums in response. “My point is,” she says, “that the few of us who  _ do  _ manage to survive adolescence, we move forwards to honour them. We do the things that they never could, because we have been given the chance to.” 

“You think I’m being selfish by staying here.”

“No. I think you don’t yet realize what you’re giving up by doing so.”

Octavia wants to argue the sentiment, but - she doesn’t know how. The truth of it is that Niylah’s right. She  _ doesn’t  _ know what she’s giving up, because she’s never tried to look. “I have a brother out there, you know,” she says, quietly, gazing out the window at the midday sun. It’s something she’s hardly ever admitted to anyone else, but something about Niylah makes her feel like she can be open - like she can be herself. 

“Is he a demigod?”

“No,” she says, “he’s human. He’s older than me, by quite a few years. He saved my life when I was a kid.”

Niylah nods, and she can tell by her expression that she isn’t judging her, not even for a second. “You know that he’s out there, but you don’t want to go to him?”

“I can’t,” she admits, and suddenly, Octavia feels very, very small. She feels as though she’s ten years old, kept in the basement under the floorboards, banished to confinement because of her mother’s mistakes. In this moment, she knows, deep down, that she’s never actually freed herself from that prison. She’s still that little girl, angry at a world that punished her just for being born. 

“Why not?” Niylah’s words remind her that she’s in the room, but for the first time since waking up here, Octavia doesn’t quite mind having a roommate with her. 

She gazes out at the sun, wondering if somewhere, Bellamy’s looking at the same one. “He thinks I’m dead. They all think I’m dead.”

“I see,” comes the response, and though she hadn’t been thinking about it until now, Octavia’s deeply grateful that Niylah doesn’t ask her why she doesn’t want Bellamy to think differently. 

“So you get it, then,” she says, looking away from the window after a moment of silence. “You get it why I can’t leave. I don’t have anywhere else to go.”

Yet - despite what she’s just admitted to, Niylah’s smiling. “On the contrary,” she says. “Not only can you do anything you want - you can  _ be  _ anyone.” 

Octavia’s never thought of it like this, and the realm of possibility that’s just been revealed to her makes her look away and lean back in her bed. She doesn’t say anything, but somehow she knows that Niylah understands, and that she’s grateful, even if she doesn’t yet know how to convey that. 

The sun eventually goes down, and not once does Octavia stop thinking about her words.

* * *

Two days later, both she and her roommate get discharged from the Infirmary at the same time. Demigods heal far faster than mortals, so it isn’t surprising, but for reasons that are beyond her Octavia feels vaguely disappointed when Clarke gives them the all-clear. 

She’s about to leave this room in her past, when Niylah calls out to her and stops her from going. “Octavia, wait,” she says, and though she’s never been good at taking orders in the past, she turns to face her. “I just - I wanted to invite you to come with me.”

“Come with you where?”

“To my home,” she says, and this is not the response she was expecting. Her silence clearly makes Niylah feels even more awkward than she already did, and so she rambles on to fill it. “Well - my apartment, really. I don’t know if I told you, but I go to school at Columbia, and I live here in the city. It would be small, but if you’re looking for a place to stay I’d be more than happy to have you there.”

It’s a lot of information all at once, but all Octavia manages to say is a measly, “You go to Columbia?”

“Uh - yeah,” Niylah says, ducking her head slightly. 

“That’s - wow,” she stammers out. “I’ve heard that’s, um, really hard.” 

“Yeah, I mean - I do things other than garden.”

“Sure. Yeah,” Octavia says, and then shakes her head. “That’s - kind of you to say, but I have a place here at Camp. You know that.”

Niylah looks visibly disappointed for a moment, but then her expression clears and she nods. “Of course. Well, if you change your mind, just come find me. The invitation always stands.” With that, she brushes by her and walks out of the room, and by extension, out of Camp itself. 

Octavia lingers for a moment, but then she follows her exit, stepping onto the bright green Camp. After so much time in the Infirmary, the fresh summer air feels nice on her face, and she finds herself smiling. Almost by route, she begins walking towards the Ares cabin, the place she’s called home for years now. 

She only stops to think about what she’s doing when she gets there. The cabin stands in front of her, the door wide open as it normally is, but as she stares inside she second-guesses herself for the first time in a decade. Nobody is stopping her from walking right on in, but she knows that she can’t. 

Slowly, she looks around the Camp at large and at all the demigods milling about. They’re all busy with varying tasks, and they’re all at least a few years younger than her. They have a place here - they have growing up to do. Sure, they’d allowed her to stay when a war was brewing on the horizon, but now there is no purpose to her being here. She’d been young when she came here, but this place was only ever meant to be a transition from childhood to adulthood. She had done everything she could to make it a home, to  _ have  _ a home, but it was only ever temporary. 

_ Not only can you do anything you want - you can be anyone.  _

The words play over and over in her mind and before she knows it, she’s running, following the path she knows Niylah took. “Wait!” she calls out the moment she sees her silhouette, and as if the woman had been waiting for her to follow, she does. 

“Are you ready to go?” is the first thing she says to her once she’s caught up, evidence enough that she was, in fact, expecting Octavia to follow. 

Normally, she’d feel somewhat annoyed that Niylah could read her to such a degree, but in the moment, she only feels a sense of levity about it all. “Yeah,” she says. “I am.” 

Maybe she’ll regret this decision come tomorrow, but as she walks out of Camp Half-Blood with Niylah at her side, Octavia suspects that for the first time in her life, she’s doing the right thing not because she feels she has to, but because she wants to. 

* * *

Niylah’s apartment is small, but it’s big enough for two people that scarcely have any belongings between them both. “You’ll have to sleep on the couch for now,” she says, “but tomorrow, we’ll look at more permanent arrangements, okay?”

“Permanent arrangements?” she repeats. 

“Well, yeah,” she says in response. “We’re roommates once more, aren’t we?”

Octavia laughs, wondering exactly when it was that a child of Demeter could manage to get on her good side like this. “Alright, yeah, I guess we are. Thank you.”

“Of course,” she says, and it’s clear that she means it. 

The day ends, and they part ways for the night, but Octavia doesn’t sleep. She sits by the window, gazing out at the bustling city below, and at all the people who have no idea she and a hundred others just fought a war in the streets they now walk on only a week ago. She sits until the sun goes down and the moon perches in the sky, and she counts the stars, and she knows with a deep certainty that she doesn’t need to see herself amongst them, as a hero or otherwise. 

“I can do anything,” she whispers to herself, a gentle reminder that she’s no longer in the battle she’s been fighting her entire life. She’s no longer a scared child banished to the basement, pushing people away on the off chance they might hurt her. “I can be anyone.” 

It’s then, amidst the pitch black darkness of the room, that she notices the soft red glow around her hands. Before long it’s enveloped her entire body and she stands just a little bit straighter, a little taller, an easy smile on her face. As if it’s a distant memory, she remembers when she was dying on the streets, how she’d seen the unmistakeable red glow of an aura of invulnerability, a gift from Ares himself, given to his children as a show of support in their battles. 

She smiles, looking up at the skies, the stars reflecting back at her in her eyes. Her father may have never spoken to her before, but she knows what he means by this, and that’s enough for her. A sense of peace fills her heart for the first time since she’d been in that car with Bellamy, all those years ago, and as she gazes out at the world below her she knows with a deep certainty that everything is going to be fine. She’s won the battle she’s been fighting with herself for years, and now, there’s nothing left for her to do but live. After all - 

Octavia Blake is the daughter of war, and it’s only fitting that she’d be the one to end it. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading, & I hope you enjoyed!


End file.
